Thanks for all the respones, after searching around I think the best value was the Magellan eXplorist 210 so I got that one. It has mapping and 22MB of memory but no magnetic compass or colour screen. I think Ireland really must be the lost city of Atlantis because it almost doesn't exist on the Europe map, just a handful of roads in Dublin and the M1/N11 along the east coast. Apart from that nothing, nada! (They are selling this non-existant map for 195 euro in Dublin, be warned!!). I might get Microsoft Autoroute 2006 as I heard it gives OS map co-ords so I could plot a route from village to village and might not get lost as often.

I used it to find the rock art at Rathgeran in Carlow and it got me to the bottom of the hill where I met the farmer who said it was too late in the evening to be trying to get to it as the sun had just set!